How to Build a Personal Brand as a University Student

Personal brand is a phrase that reads as slightly grim on paper. In practice, all it means is that the story a stranger pieces together from your CV, LinkedIn, coffee-chat pitch and Google results is a single story rather than four disjointed ones.

The one sentence

Every student should be able to finish this sentence in a single breath: "I'm the kind of person who ______." If you cannot finish it, your brand does not exist yet. If you can, that sentence should thread through every surface a recruiter or alumnus encounters.

Three surfaces, one story

Your CV, your LinkedIn and your interview pitch should be recognisably the same person. The bullets that appear on your CV should also be the ones you can talk about for three minutes in an interview. The society roles you list on LinkedIn should be the ones you actually did, in a way that maps to the sentence above.

Compounding, not curating

The strongest student brands are not the most curated — they are the most consistent over time. Two years of committee work at the same society, one year building the same student venture, an alumni network you have actually stayed in touch with. Consistency reads as seriousness in a way variety never does.

Tie it together

Start with the CV (our student CV guide), then the LinkedIn (LinkedIn guide), then interview prep (interview prep guide). If all three tell the same story, you have a brand.